Alastair (Ghosts of Ophidian Book 2)

by Scott McElhaney

  They looked at each other across the table. Some looked confused as to what their leader was searching for.

  “Whatever it takes, Commander, I offer my services to our survival,” Theo said.

  “Way to kiss butt,” Jill said, nudging him before turning to Hutchins, “I also am willing to assist.”

  The others joined in, getting a nod of approval from their leader.

  Nineteen

  Theo’s heart was racing as he slowly and reluctantly entered the Staff Lounge. In spite of Jill’s strong recommendations, he promised her that he would not give in to any of Rebecca’s advances if indeed she had nefarious intentions.

  “You came,” Rebecca called from a dark booth in the corner.

  She waved him over, setting a load of butterflies loose in his stomach. The lounge was empty save for the two of them, so he had nothing to slow his progress toward the corner booth.

  “Theophilus,” she said, gesturing to the seat across from her, “I truly hoped you’d join me, but I wasn’t sure you would. I’m good at reading people, but you… you’re an anomaly. You must tell me what you’re thinking.”

  He sat down, then folded his hands on the table in front of him. She was looking at him in a way that made him feel very uneasy. It wasn’t so much a look of desire as it was a lording stare of dominance. Her eyes spoke of a woman who was accustomed to getting her way and she expected nothing less.

  “I’m wondering why you wanted to see me,” he said, clearing his throat, “And at the same time, I’m a little afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?” she asked, placing her hands over his, “I would hope that it’s not me you’re afraid of.”

  “Why am I here, ma’am?” he asked, “Why am I not with the others preparing for the coming venture?”

  “Ah, but this is preparing. You see, the Gods of Pli have no idea that we’re coming, but they will the very moment we enter hyperspace,” she said, “And when they find out, we may find ourselves faced with a lot more than we bargained for. Who do you think is going to survive this little faceoff?”

  “I would hope every one of us,” Theo said.

  “Lean forward, Theo. Let me show you something,” she said, as she also leaned forward, “No, lean closer.”

  He wasn’t sure what she wanted him to see. She tugged his arms, forcing him to the point where their noses almost touched.

  “Look into my eyes and tell me what you see, Theo,” she said, reaching up with each of her middle fingers and gently caressing the side of his head.

  “I see you, Miss Strong,” he said, annoyed by her touch.

  She was now holding his face in her hands, thumbs at his chin and fingers caressing his temples.

  “No, you’re not looking close enough,” she said.

  “I see me, reflected in your eyes,” he said, “But something is wrong… I look different somehow.”

  “Close your eyes,” she said.

  He did, and then he heard a scream, forcing his eyes open. He was in the gray world all of a sudden. Miss Strong was also in this world and she was moving just the same as he.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  She didn’t seem as interested in him as she was just a moment ago. She was calling out to the other wraithlike creatures that were swarming into the lounge. He couldn’t understand what she was saying. She turned and pointed to Theo.

  “They will help you, Theo,” she said, “If you let them.”

  The black smoky ghosts were closing in on him from all sides.

  “Where are we? How did I get here?” he demanded.

  “This is the world without time, Theo,” she said.

  Theo rushed after her as best as he could through the invisible molasses. He swung his whole arm at her, tearing through her as though she existed without substance. The demons were agitated by his actions and now seemed all the more intent to come after him.

  “Let them help you. Let them help us, Theo. Don’t you want to be on the winning side?” she asked.

  He turned and located his body and what he saw instantly disgusted him. He was lying on the floor near the corner booth with Rebecca straddling him, her lips locked with his in a frozen posture.

  “What are you doing to me?” he asked, turning to the ghost of Rebecca.

  “Just sharing some sheol weed with you in the sweetest way possible,” she said, “And if you let my friends help you, we could share a lot of things you’ve only dreamed of.”

  He now realized that one of the larger wraiths was holding something like a gun with wires dangling from the end. The demon was inserting something into the weapon that appeared to be made of metal. He now recognized it as one of the copper plugs that Stinger had in the back of his head.

  “You’re with the Pli?” he spat at Rebecca.

  She simply smiled at him as she joined the ghostly figures headed toward him. He looked down at the frozen Theo lying on the floor, then remembered what his father had told him to do. He leapt through the woman’s frozen figure and reclaimed the body beneath her.

  He awoke with a scream, his lips separating from the chief cook’s. He punched her in the stomach, then tried to force her off of him.

  “Theo! You passed out and I was just trying to revive you,” she hollered at him, feigning innocence.

  “Get away from me!” he growled, trying to twist out from under her strong grasp.

  She placed her hand on his throat and squeezed with an amazing strength he didn’t expect she had.

  “It’s okay, Theo,” she said, speaking with a contradictory sweetness, “Breathe, Theo! Please breathe!”

  He grabbed her wrist and tried to pull it from his throat. She brought her other hand to his neck and now squeezed with both hands. He could feel his face swelling as he fought to breathe.

  “It’s going to be okay, sweetie,” she said, leaning down to kiss him while he writhed beneath her, “It’ll be over soon.”

  He fired his pistol into her stomach, then angled the weapon and shot twice toward her chest. Her eyes opened in shock as she choked out a pained gasp. Her grip on his neck released, permitting him to finally suck in some much needed oxygen.

  “What’s going on in here?” someone hollered, “Security!”

  Theo slid out from under her, discovering that he was now soaked in her blood. She coughed twice, then closed her eyes.

  “She was choking me,” he said, holding his bloody pistol as he rose from the floor.

  “Set the pistol down!” the man in the doorway hollered.

  He glanced over and now realized that two people were pointing weapons at him. Theo slowly reached over and placed his pistol on the table.

  “She had attacked me. She was strangling me,” he said, his voice raspy, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she has one of those plugs in her head.”

  “Just stay there until security can get here to make an assessment. For now, the both of you are the enemy until we prove otherwise.”

  Twenty

  She didn’t have a plug hidden beneath her hair, and the only evidence that she was attacking him was the finger-like bruising on his neck. The security team quickly pointed out that she could have been strangling him to defend herself and stop his advances. Though she had a reputation for her way with the men on the ship, she had no record of wrongdoing of any sort.

  Theo would be cuffed and brought to the holding cell while they investigated the matter further. That had been the plan at least, up until the point the medical examiner found something they’d never come across before. As he was lifting her onto the body bag, her head tilted back and her mouth opened. Drilled into the roof of her mouth was a copper plug similar to the one they discovered in Stinger’s skull.

  “Uh, our boy may have been telling the truth,” the examiner said as he lowered her into the body bag, “I think you can go ahead and uncuff him.”

  The security staff swarmed around the body, eager to discover that now any one of their crewmates could be a traitor. If nothin
g else, the only one they could be sure wasn’t a traitor was the boy who killed Rebecca Strong.

  An alarm sounded while the majority of the crew still had no idea what had transpired in the Staff Lounge. Those currently in the lounge searched each other’s mouths and hair for any sign of a copper plug. They even went so far as to inspect each other’s ears. No traitor was found among the dozen or so currently in the lounge. After the body of Rebecca was removed from the room, the captain and the entire security staff was called to the lounge.

  Just before they arrived, Theo posed a question to the man who appeared to be in charge. Theo’s question caused the man a moment of pause.

  “I’d bet we’ll find a plug in every single person she’s been with. It was about to happen to me and all she did was kiss me,” Theo said.

  They compared notes on the relationship rumors that have hovered around the chief cook, then drew out a plan to call each of those people following the inspection of the security staff. They were only partway through inspecting the security staff when one of the men started becoming unusually agitated. It was only when he finally tried to run off that the others realized something was amiss. One of the other men made the potentially rash decision to draw his weapon and fire upon the fleeing security man.

  It only took a minute before they verified the shooting was warranted. That particular man had a plug in the back of his head. They’d either missed identifying it during the last search, or it was inserted since they’d been underway.

  “Things are going to start getting out of hand if all this shooting gets out to the rest of the crew,” Mutt said, “We need to conduct this investigation as quickly and as quietly possible and without alerting the others to what is going on.”

  Mutt had already asked Jill to bring up a change of clothes for Theo. That way he wouldn’t be heading back through the ship with a bloody outfit on. After inspecting Jill for plugs, they permitted the two to return to their berthing under escort. Theo asked about returning to work, but Mutt insisted they be quarantined until the search was over in order to prevent the risk of contaminating the investigation.

  They silently made their way back to the storage room where their escort placed a holding block on the door. He explained that the unit didn’t lock the door. It only served to prove that the door remained shut. If they had to go to the bathroom, they would be required to resort to using the plastic pail until the quarantine was lifted. He offered them an apologetic smile and estimated that it shouldn’t be much longer than two or three hours.

  The man left to return to his duties, leaving Jill and Theo facing each other near the door.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” Jill said, crossing her arms, “You go up there to meet with her, pale as a ghost and shaking like a leaf. A half hour later, I hear an emergency detail called up to the Staff Lounge. Several minutes after that, I hear all the security units called up to the Staff Lounge. Then I get yanked out of the arcade by none other than Mac, telling me that the Captain requested I bring you a complete change of clothes in the Staff Lounge.

  “Now, I won’t even tell you what all was racing through my mind. I thought of everything from you being violently whipped in some sadistic sex ritual to you possibly being dead. When I arrived, I saw someone mopping up blood in the corridor with frightened expressions on all those standing around. Before I ever got to the staff lounge, your clothes were taken from me and someone started searching my hair, my ears, and my mouth. I was able to peek past one of the guards and caught a glimpse of someone holding your shirt. It was soaked in blood, Theo.”

  “I was-”

  “I almost died right there, Theo. I almost collapsed in on myself like a dying star,” she cried.

  He reached out and took her into his arms, holding her as she shuddered.

  “She was one of them, Jill,” he said, “She was a servant of Pli and she tried to put a plug in my head.”

  She wiped her eyes, then stepped out of his arms.

  “That’s what she wanted you for?” she asked.

  “Yes, and I almost couldn’t get away. She drugged me with the weed,” he said, “I shot her, Jill. I actually killed someone intentionally.”

  “Oh my,” she whispered.

  “She probably got to others also, so they are performing a search throughout the whole ship.”

  “Then the Pli must know we’re coming. If they’ve got all these spies inside this ship, they have to know.”

  “I don’t know, but it sure isn’t looking good,” he replied, “But one thing I do know is this… I told you so! I told you I wasn’t going to do whatever it is she wanted.”

  She looked up at him and finally found her smile again. She crossed her arms again and shook her head.

  “That’s all you wanted then – an ‘I told you so’?” she said.

  “Exactly. Nothing compares to a good ‘I told you so’ when your girlfriend thinks she knows it all,” he replied.

  “Is that so?” she cocked an eyebrow at him.

  Twenty-one

  The search was finished nearly two hours later. Jill and Theo were watching a film on the portable entertainment panel when the “all clear” was called and everyone was free from quarantine. The rest of the afternoon and early evening would be filled with hushed conversation and a plethora of rumors. Jill and Theo would be kept free from most of the rumors as they were back to the isolation of doing the dishes and scrubbing the pots and pans.

  It was no secret now however that Theo was the one who had killed the chief cook. It was however a secret as to why he did it. No one saw fit to share the fact that she was a servant of Pli until Theo started revealing that fact after dinner.

  “She had a plug in the roof of her mouth,” he said to those who had crowded around his cluttered sink, “Why do you think they searched all our mouths this time?”

  “I heard that our security staff ended up killing Butch, Superman, and Guerrero,” one of the cooks said, “And we know she was sweet on all of them. Heck, she pretty much lived with Butch.”

  “And to think I envied those guys,” another added, “I used to dream of those perfect legs.”

  “Well, chew on some sheol weed and you might get a chance to see those legs again,” Theo added, “I wouldn’t doubt she’s hanging around permanently in that hell now.”

  “Why do you say that?” Hermes asked.

  “Haven’t you ever tried that garbage? Once you succumb to the drug, you find yourself in a different, spooky form of the place you came from. You can even see your own frozen body. All around you is swarming with ghosts or apparitions or something. Everything is gray and people don’t move – at least not the living ones,” Theo said, “It just feels like you’re stuck in the netherworld. It’s frightening.”

  His guests were quiet all of a sudden. One of the cooks slipped through and handed another dirty pan to Theo.

  “Yet, our genius scientists take this backwards weed and run its backwards atoms through our particle accelerators in order to come up with a backwards form of space travel that possibly takes us right through that spooky netherworld and into the Pli’s own backyard,” the cook said, handing Theo some dirty spatulas, “Doesn’t sound very ‘genius’ to me.”

  “Can’t say I’m a fan of anything to do with the sheol weed,” Theo replied, dropping the pan into his sink of foamy water.

  “Well, if you’ve got any last minute things to take care of, you’d better do them before 9:00. After that, there’s no telling what we’ll be doing.”

  . . . .

  The crew was informed at 8:45 that they would have to maintain a posture of military readiness at all times starting immediately. The military called this posture “General Quarters”. This meant that even if they were sleeping, they needed to be dressed and have their boots nearby. This also meant that all airtight doors would remain shut, securing the ship into over fifty separate sections completely independent of each other’s atmosphere. Airtight doors could be opened as the cr
ew moved about the ship, but they needed to be closed behind them, maintaining the ship’s airtight integrity.

  Theo was issued another pistol in place of the one that was used against Rebecca. Beyond the duty of emergency ship security if called upon, he and Jill were told simply to stay out of the way during what should feel like a jaunt of anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. They both wanted to be of more assistance in the upcoming altercation, but nothing would be required of them.

  When his wristwatch marked the 9:00 hour, a warning alarm sounded, followed by some shuddering throughout the whole ship. The room turned gray around him only momentarily before changing back to the way it was. He looked over at Jill, who simply shrugged. He looked down at his watch and realized that the time was now 3:35am, yet he felt like not a single moment passed.

  “What happened?” he asked, showing her his watch.

  She peered down at it just as the ship started shuddering more violently than before.

  Twenty-two

  “Attention all crew members. We have slipped out of hyperspace a little closer to the target than we initially intended. We are currently experiencing a significant amount of gravitational turbulence as we attempt to escape the outer regions of a secondary black hole we hadn’t forecasted,” Mutt stated over the intercom, “We are not currently under attack and it appears that we have not yet been identified. Keep this channel clear for further reports. I need the Military Command and the Subcommand to the bridge at this time.”

  The stack of boxes near Jill was about to topple. Theo reached out and attempted to right the stack. His efforts would prove useless however as other boxes throughout the storeroom crashed down.